Garret FitzGerald

Garret FitzGerald (9 February 1926-19 May 2011) was Taoiseach of Ireland from 30 June 1981 to 9 March 1982 and from 14 December 1982 to 10 March 1987, interrupting Charles Haughey's terms in office on both occasions.

Biography
Garret FitzGerald was born in Dublin, County Dublin, Ireland in 1926, and he gained a doctorate at University College Dublin and a BL at King's Inns. He worked as a lecturer in political economy at UCD from 1959 to 1973, and he became a Senator in 1965. He waas elected a Fine Gael member of the Dail Eireann for Dublin South-East in 1969, and he served as Minister for Foreign Affairs from 1973 to 1977, when he succeeded Liam Cosgrave as party leader. In his first period as Taoiseach, he set up an Inter-Governmental Council on Northern Ireland with the British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. He lost the March 1982 elections, but was returned to office in the December 1982 general election, with another Fine Gael-Irish Labor Party coalition. On 15 November 1985, FitzGerald signed the Anglo-Irish Agreement with Thatcher, which for the first time gave the Republic a consultative role in Northern Ireland, yet recognized the right of the majority in Northern Ireland to decide the province's political allegiance. This failed to bring a solution to the violence there, as it was fiercely rejected by the Ulster unionists, but did not go far enough for the IRA. FitzGerald's political career was notable bothh for his willingness to understand unionist loyalties, his work with Thatcher, and his attempts to make the Irish constitution more attractive to Ulster Protestants. He died in 2011.